When printing text data or image data on recording paper using a printer connected to a personal computer or the like, a printer driver must be first installed on the personal computer for controlling the printer. The printer driver is generally distributed to the user in a form stored on a CD-ROM or other storage medium, or in a form already incorporated in the operating system of the personal computer.
When installing a printer driver from a CD-ROM, the CD-ROM is first inserted into a media-reading device provided in the personal computer. In this case, the installer is started automatically. The installer displays a window on the display of the personal computer having an install wizard format. Through this window, the user specifies the directory (folder) for installing the driver and performs other settings. After inputting an install command, the printer driver stored on the CD-ROM is installed in the specified directory. When the printer driver is installed on the personal computer, a virtual printer is created on the personal computer.
However, there has been a trend in recent years to increase the number of settings in the printing conditions as the printers are being provided with more functions. With this increase in settings, more operations and more time are required for setting the printing conditions. This is particularly inconvenient to users wishing to change settings on the printer as the user must switch through numerous screens and often cannot easily reach the screen needed to perform the desired setting. However, the difficulties can be overcome by using technologies disclosed in Japanese unexamined patent application publication Nos. 2004-38296 and 2002-287924. These publications propose registering a plurality of virtual printers having different default printing conditions on a personal computer, and enabling the user to execute a printing process according to desired printing conditions simply by selecting the virtual printer conforming to the desired printing conditions. In this way, desired printing results can be easily obtained without having to set each of a plurality of printing conditions to the desired values.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-167714 and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0137681A1 propose a technique that compares printing condition manually set by a user and default printing condition previously set to default values and, if there is any setting item whose content is different from the content set in the default printing condition, displays the relevant setting item in a different manner from other setting items using color coding.